


Long Way Home

by firefright, pentapus



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Illnesses, M/M, Magic, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2018-10-31 18:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10905186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefright/pseuds/firefright, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentapus/pseuds/pentapus
Summary: Getting themselves lost in the mountains while out on a mission for Bruce was bad enough on its own, as far as Jason is concerned, but when Dick is grievously injured in an attack by the very men they were sent to track down, he soon discovers that 'bad' can always becomeworse. Now on the run from their pursuers, Jason is faced with the struggle of both trying to keep Dick alive, and finding their way home before it becomes too late to save him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I feel like it's been a while since I posted something JayDick focused, so here we are with another fantasy AU by yours truly. This story is the result of a reverse bang between I and the talented Pentapus. She provided the beautiful art, which you can find down below, and I wrote the words to match it. Hope you enjoy!

By the time Jason finally admits to himself that they’re well and truly lost, he and Dick have already been walking along the same stretch of narrow mountain path for hours.

The venture had started simply enough, as they left Gotham’s borders with Bruce’s blessing behind them to take part in a scouting mission through the surrounding wilderness. Recent bandit attacks and sightings had made the undertaking necessary, as merchant and ordinary traveller alike had come to their hall with growing frequency over the past two weeks to petition Lord Wayne to protect both them and their possessions as they moved between the city and other nearby settlements, and Bruce — serious as always about his duty to his people — had readily agreed.

There was no one he trusted more, he had said, to see to this task than his own sons, the two eldest of the three boys he had rescued, fostered, and then named his heirs from Gotham’s own streets (or in the youngest’s case, a fallen noble house). Dick, of course, had volunteered readily for the mission, without any need for orders, and Jason, younger and even more eager to prove himself, had been quick to follow suit.

Only Tim remained behind with Bruce, and now, two days later, Jason is more than wishing he’d done the same.

It’s the mist he blames for their predicament; thick seeping cloud that had risen out of nowhere some twenty-four hours into their journey, despite the day being pleasantly warm and sunny before. Maybe it’s just his imagination, but Jason could swear that there’s something malevolent about it, a prickling that pinged at the supernatural senses he’d been born with even before they’d become separated from the rest of the group (the sound of those men’s screaming heard far too late to intervene), then lost their horses after a nearby wolf’s howling spooked the beasts to bolt and throw them. It dampens his hair and clothing, weighs down his limbs, and the longer he spends within it, the more unnaturally tired Jason feels, as if the very air itself is trying to drain away his energy.

The combination of which has left him feeling understandably frustrated, particularly when a quick glance ahead shows him Dick, somehow still moving with light, energetic steps down the path in front of him.

“You know we’re lost, don’t you?” Jason calls, wanting to share his misery after they pass what seems like a suspiciously familiar looking boulder for what he’s sure is the third time in the last hour. “Dick, did you hear what I said? We’re—”

“We’re not lost, Jason.” Dick replies. There’s a confidence in his voice Jason can’t echo, even if he wanted to.

Dressed in a grey tunic meant to disguise his noble position, Dick is an almost invisible presence in the mist himself. Something which quite frankly would be terrifying to Jason considering the gravity of their situation, were it not for the fact that the concealing effect of the wool is put off by Dick also being in possession of one other, wholly unmissable feature at the same time.

“Are you sure?” Only through concentrated effort does Jason manage to force his legs to move faster, trying to catch up to Dick and cursing when the length of his sword bashes against his thigh in the process. The fall from his horse has done something to his belt, and now it keeps slipping down his hips no matter how tightly he pulls it in around his waist. “None of this looks even the slightest bit familiar to you?”

A single sweep of Jason’s hand indicates the entirety of the area around them; the slopes on either side of the path (one rocketing steeply downwards, the other climbing sharply up), the loose shale and fallen boulders, but Dick only shakes his head when he finally takes pity on Jason and stops to let him catch up to him.

“No,” he says, still with the same ringing confidence as before, “We’re on the right track, I can feel it.”

“Oh, you can feel it can you?” Jason grouses, almost panting by the time he reaches Dick’s side. His feet hurt from walking, and he’s hungry too. But they have nothing to eat, their supplies gone with their horses, and the only way to get a drink around here is via the occasional trickles of water they find running down off the rocks above them. “Is that in through the tips of your pointy ears, or out through the bottoms of your twinkly toes?”

“My…” Dick wrinkles his nose at the acid present in his words. “Jason, I don’t have either of those things, and you know it.”

“You might as well have, bird boy.” he pointedly replies.

It’s a fact that most people don’t see what Jason sees when he looks at Dick. The things he first saw when he was just a boy, brought home by Bruce after trying to steal the Lord of Gotham’s favourite horse while he was entertaining guests inside one of the city’s taverns. They just see a man, albeit a handsome one. Tan-skinned, blue-eyed, and with a smile that has broken the hearts of more than a few women at court. Jason on the other hand...

He’d always known he was unusual, born with a white streak in his hair and eyes that saw too much, but he’d never appreciated the good that power could do him until he was first brought to meet Bruce’s eldest foster son. In that moment, Jason’s Sight had pierced straight through the concealing glamour the older boy wore, seeing through the plain guise of normality to what lay underneath.

Because the truth is, Dick isn’t just handsome, he’s beautiful. Beneath that glamour, he shines with a powerful life-force; moves with a grace and energy that can only be called inhuman. And more than that, he has _wings_. Small, blue, and glowing. Useless for flight, he had confessed when Jason asked him, but wings nonetheless. They flow out from his shoulders like gossamer thread, with feathers that dance even in the smallest breeze, and because of them, Dick _shines_ , there’s no other way to describe it. And in this situation that light, that energy, is maybe the only reason why Jason hasn’t lost track of him amongst the fog yet. The way he did all the other men Bruce had given them responsibility and command over.

If he were more sentimental, especially back when they first met, Jason might have called what he felt for Dick in that moment — beyond a dawning sense of inferiority — by a more dramatic name. But he isn’t, wasn’t. Now, however...

Now he pushes that thought away into the back of his mind where it belongs, watching as those wings on Dick’s back twitch in irritation at his words. Sometimes, when they’re not lost in the mountains and being pursued by a murderous group of bandits, Jason loves to rile Dick up just so that he can watch them move. Here, he just takes it as a kind of petty relief that he’s not the only one suffering.

Dick chooses not to directly respond to the insult. He’s long since become desensitised to Jason’s bad habits when he’s feeling cornered. “You need to trust me, Jason. So long as we keep moving, I know we’ll be all right.”

“Well I beg to differ. We’ve been going in circles, Dick. You know we’ve passed that boulder back there at least three times now, right? And I swear, if I see us go past it again, I’m just going to ahead and throw myself off this cliff and end it right here and now.”

Dick sighs at his dramatics. “You’re exaggerating.”

“No, I’m not.” Jason grouses, yanking at his belt again. “And I can prove it.”

“Really.”

“Yes, _really._ ”

Without waiting for another response, Jason stomps forwards to the boulder at the side of the path that was talking about before. He can feel Dick’s eyes on his back as he draws his sword — forged specially for him by the hands of Bruce’s own favoured blacksmith on his sixteenth birthday, only a month ago — out of its scabbard and brings the point of the blade to rest just above the surface of the stone.

“Jason,” Dick groans, “What are you doing?”

“Proving it to you. Like I said.”

The ugly scraping sound of the blade carving into the stone makes them both cringe, and for a moment all Jason can think of is how, if Bruce could see him now, he’d probably slap the back of Jason’s head for treating his weapon this way. That imagined punishment isn’t a strong enough deterrent to stop him though, and once he’s done, Dick steps forward to get a closer look at the result of his scratching.

“... what is that?” he asks, confusion palpable.

“What’s it look like, Dick?” Jason says, bringing his sword up and resting the flat of the blade back against his shoulder. “It’s an X.”

“An X for what?”

“What do you mean a—” Jason resists the urge to step back onto the older man’s toes, “It’s not an X for anything! It’s just a mark, so that the next time we walk past this place, we’ll know for sure that we’ve already been here.”

Dick frowns, “You’re that determined that we’re going in circles?”

“One hundred percent, Dick. My eyes don’t lie.”

This time Dick let loose a different type of sigh, reaching up to brush his mist-dampened hair back from his forehead. “Fine. Fine. All right. I guess it can’t hurt our chances, at least. But trust me okay, Jay? I promise you we’ll get out of this. If we just…”

He trails off.

“If we just what?” Jason asks, turning his head back over his shoulder to look at him, but Dick is no longer paying attention to what he’s doing. Instead, he has his eyes turned down the path behind them, and his hand resting on the hilt of his own sword. “Dick?”

Dick frowns, then sighs. “... nothing. Sorry, I just... for a moment I thought I heard… I don’t know.”

“Wow, that’s vague.”

“Oh fuck you, Jay.” Dick snaps, finally losing his patience as his wings draw up tight against his back. “You know this attitude of yours isn’t helping anything either. I get that this isn’t what you imagined for your first command. That you’re frustrated and you want to get out of here, I do too. But if you’re just going to complain all the time, then maybe you should—”

Jason blinks, and there’s an arrow in Dick’s shoulder.

He doesn’t see the moment of impact, nor does he hear the sound of the shaft whistling down through the air towards them. He does, however, see the shock and horror spreading across Dick’s face as he registers what it is that’s happened to him, and then the pained cry that escapes his lips as — with a terrifying lurch — he stumbles backwards away from Jason towards the edge of the path. The side that leads _down_ , not up.

Without thinking, Jason twists round on his heel from where he’s standing and barrels forwards after him, hand outstretched to grab any part of Dick he can reach to stop him falling. That part ends up being the front of his tunic, and despite his greater weight, Jason still finds his feet sliding across the wet ground before he’s able to throw himself back and pull Dick away from that terrible precipice.

They fall down in a heap, Jason dropping his sword in the process out of a fear of accidentally impaling either himself or Dick on it. Dick lets out another cry as the impact knocks the arrow in his shoulder sideways, tearing still more of his flesh, and the guilt Jason feels because of it is offset only by his relief that Dick’s alive.

… though that may not be the case for much longer if they don’t get out of here and find some cover soon.

Another arrow slams into ground next to Jason’s head, missing his ear by inches. Then a second whistles overhead, passing through the space between Dick’s wings. Both are far too close for comfort, and Jason can only pray that Dick will forgive him later as he first pushes the older man off of him, then roughly yanks him up onto his feet after swiftly climbing to his own.

“Jason…” Dick has time to gasp, eyes watering and face rapidly paling from the pain.

“Run, idiot!” Is all Jason snaps back at him, before shoving Dick forwards down the path. Luckily he’s not so far gone from blood loss yet that he can’t follow a simple order — even one from his younger brother.

Together they hurtle along the cliffside, scattering loose stones and tearing free blades of yellow mountain grass beneath their feet while arrows continue to rain down from above them. The mist makes the going even more treacherous than it has any right to be, obscuring the way ahead of them as well as clinging to their arms and legs — lending further credence to Jason’s theory that there’s something unnatural about it.

More than once, he has to reach out ahead of him to tug Dick back upright after he stumbles, always seeming to pitch closer to the cliff edge rather than away from it, and only belatedly does Jason realise that in all the panic of the initial attack he left his sword behind them. An oversight which could prove to be a real problem real soon.

Cover is all Jason can think of. They need cover from this damn arrow storm, or to run far enough away to get out of the bandit’s range. He doesn’t dare raise his head from the path ahead of him to try and get a view of exactly where the archers are hiding, but they must be high up. High enough that the same mist that’s disguising his and Dick’s escape route is also distorting their aim — which is probably the only reason why the pair of them don’t resemble Alfred’s favourite pincushion right now.

Another arrow just barely misses clipping his head, and Jason ducks reflexively, even though it’s already past the point where such an action could do him any good. Then, as he looks up again, his heart stops in his chest, even as his blood begins to roar in his ears.

That’s the only way he can think to describe the feeling he has at the sight of Dick tumbling to the ground, rolling and sliding with another hoarse cry of agony as he tries to stop himself from slipping off the edge of the precipice that has suddenly loomed up ahead of them. A precipice that, if Jason’s theory of them going in circles had been correct, shouldn’t be there.

Despite popular belief (that of his family and few friends), Jason does know how to take being proven wrong gracefully. Just not when Dick’s life is at risk because of it.

“Dick!” he yells, even as Dick screams his name in return. Without thought, Jason throws himself forwards onto his stomach after him. A desperate grab of his hand catches Dick’s wrist, but with a sickening jolt in his stomach, Jason realises that their momentum is still too great to stop them from slipping over the edge.

Throwing out his free hand, he desperately tries to find purchase on something, _anything_ , to prevent the fall, and it’s only by sheer luck that his fingers manage to catch onto the edge of a raised up piece of stone protruding out from the cliff face.

Pain tears through the entire length of Jason’s arm then, centering in his shoulder as their fall abruptly stops before it can even begin. Dick’s weight combined with his own pulls muscle and bone almost to breaking point, and Jason grits his teeth against the strain as he looks first at the cliff above him, then down at Dick’s pale face raised up to his own from where he dangles over a drop Jason cannot see the bottom of.

Only the mist, thick and swirling like ocean waves, or the poisoned contents of a witch’s cauldron.

“Dick…” Jason gasps through the pain, “Dick, are you…” He can’t even bring himself to finish the sentence. It’s a laughable question to ask in this situation.

“Fine.” Dick still answers him, wings hanging as limply from his back as his arm does from his injured shoulder. That is… a worrying amount of blood now staining his tunic that Jason can see.

“Shit… I...” he swallows, looking back up again. If they’re lucky, the bandits will think they’ve fallen to their deaths, so maybe if he can pull Dick back up…

He tries it, then groans as he barely manages to lift him halfway before sagging back down again.

“Don’t.” Dick says quietly, “Jay, I can’t… my arm…”

Jason laughs. Not because it’s funny, but because of _course_. Of course it doesn’t matter if he manages to get Dick back in range of the cliffside, with his arm like that he’ll never be able to climb back up by himself.

“You know, now would be a real good time to tell me you know how to fly after all.”

Dick smiles weakly. His wings flutter, small and frail against his back. Too small by far to ever support his weight in the air. “Sorry, Jay.”

Jason shakes his head, “Don’t… don’t apologise… we can…” he swallows hard, “I’ll figure this out. Just give me a minute.”

His shoulder is screaming agony at him, and his fingers have already begun to ache from the stress of supporting both his own weight and Dick’s on such a narrow surface, but there has to be a way out of this for both of them. He just needs to think, then he can—

“Drop me.”

Jason freezes, as much as he can dangling over the side of a cliff anyway, then looks down. “What?”

“Drop me, Jason.” Dick’s voice shakes, but the sentiment beneath it is firm. “Drop me, then you’ll be able to climb back up.”

“Fuck you.” Jason replies sharply. “I’m not doing that.”

“You don’t have a choice.” Dick’s head hangs for a moment, black hair covering his face like a mourning shroud before he draws in a deep breath to steady himself and looks back up again. “Drop me. If you don’t we’ll both fall.”

“And if I do, you’ll die!”

Dick’s smile this time is a bittersweet thing, “Better just me than both of us.”

The blood roars higher in Jason’s ears. “No.”

“Jason—”

“NO!”

His body is shaking, sweat slicking the grip he has on the stone and Dick’s wrist both. He knows Dick’s right, that if he doesn’t let him go, they’ll both fall soon, it’s only a matter of time. But for Dick to ask him to do that… to ask him to voluntarily let him fall to his death…

He might as well be asking Jason to take a sword and plunge it through his heart.

“I don’t care, Dick. You’re crazy if you think I… I’m not taking that responsibility. I’m not walking back to Gotham, to Bruce, and telling him I let you die. I can’t do it. I _won't_. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did. Not when I… not when you’re…”

“And I don’t want to be responsible for your death either!” Dick snaps back at him, finding the strength within himself to raise his voice, if not much else. “For God’s sake, Jason. At least if I die this way, it’s knowing that you’ll live. Don’t you understand that? So let go of me. I’m ordering you, let go of me right—”

Gravel crunches above them before he can go any further. Jason looks up at the sound, and his eyes widen as he marks the person standing there. With the mist and their hood up, any features are impossible to make out — he sees only strange smooth white blankness where their face should be — but the staff they’re holding can’t be missed. Neither can the glow around it as they raise the wood in their hands with a clear meaning to bring it down upon his own.

Well, Jason thinks bitterly, that certainly does make things easier on him.

“Jason, what is—”

_I’m sorry, Dick._

Jason draws in a deep breath, fully acknowledging that it may be his last ever in this world, as his aching fingers finally falter and slip from the surface of the cliff, plunging them down into the waiting mists below.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! So I had the next chapter of this written, and so I figured, hey, why not post it this week? So here it is, the continued misadventures of Jason and fae!Dick for you all to enjoy. You can now also find the art that inspired this story officially posted up on [Penta's tumblr](https://pentapoda.tumblr.com/post/160821590140/a-reversebang-style-art-fic-trade-with) as well!

He comes to with mud beneath his cheek, the sound of running water in his ears, and a smell, rank and murky, gunking up his nose.

Jason opens his eyes once. Shuts them. Then five minutes later opens them again, permanently this time.

It’s dark around him. In addition to the water, he can hear crickets chirping in the distance, and what sounds like a particularly virile frog making his amorous attentions known to the world. Everything hurts: his body, his head. How did he get here? Where is _here_? And more importantly, where is—

The memory of what happened careens back into Jason’s head like a runaway horse, sending strength flooding back into his limbs as he lurches up from the thick mud beneath him. “Dick!” He cries out, staggering to his feet with water sloshing around his boots. “Dick, where are you?!”

Standing up gives him a better perspective on his location: the edge of a riverbank. The course of the water running past is deep and fast flowing in its centre, and for a moment all Jason can do is stare at the breadth of it, then turn his head slowly to look upstream, where even in the moonlight the shape of the rising mountain peak above him is easy to make out, coated in mist.

They fell… they fell into a river.

The sheer idiotic luck of it has Jason reeling back for a moment, before far more pressing concerns take his attention over once again. He begins to stagger around the area, carelessly raising his voice as he shouts Dick’s name over and over again.

Then finally, after ten minutes of searching, he sees something: the barest glow in the darkness.

“Dick!” Jason forces his legs, bruised and uncooperative as they are, into a run. He pushes through the thick reeds that grow in the marshy ground here and drags his feet through the mud, until finally, _finally_ , he can collapse down on his knees at Dick’s side. “Dick…”

The glow of his wings is so faint, it’s almost non-existent, and when Jason presses a shaking hand to Dick’s face, he’s not sure whose skin is colder. Dick’s lips are almost the exact same shade of blue as his eyes when they’re open, and his breathing is so shallow in his chest that it barely rises with each inhale. The arrow, cursed thing that is, still sticks out of his shoulder, ugly and intrusive, but there’s no fresh blood that Jason can see coming from the wound. Probably thanks to the mud currently covering it, and he sends a silent prayer of thanks to whatever god may be listening that that’s so.

“Hey, Dick… Dick, come on… wake up.” Jason pats his cheek, and then rolls him, as gently as he can, onto his back. Pushing Dick’s wings flat beneath his back as he does. “Come on, you faery bastard, wake up!”

There’s no response. No fluttering of eyelashes or even the twitch of a brow to show that he’s been heard.

“Come on, please wake up, please…” But try as Jason might, nothing stirs him, not his words, nor the gentle shaking of his arm.

Jason swallows hard as he’s forced to accept that Dick is well and truly out, and he can only hope that the wound and blood loss itself is the only cause rather than an infection running through his veins. Such a thing would be all too easy to catch in a place like this, even taking into account Dick’s natural resistance to illness.

Sitting back on his knees in the water, Jason wills himself just to breathe for a moment. To take in the sheer overpowering relief that they’re both alive when he had thought for sure they were dead. He holds it, bathes in it, and then, once he’s sure he’s calm enough to do what needs to be done, lets go of the thought to get to work.

First, he hooks his hands under Dick’s armpits to drag him up out of the water and mud onto a relatively drier part of the river bank. Staying in the water would be stupid for a number of reasons, for him and Dick both. Jason can already feel his limbs starting to shake and his teeth chatter in his jaw as he runs his hands over Dick’s shoulder, and he has to raise them to his mouth, heaving warm breath after warm breath across his fingers to get some feeling back before he dares reach for the shaft of the arrow.

Jason’s no doctor. He knows nothing about the healing arts other than the basic first aid Alfred forced him to learn alongside the rest of them. As such, he doesn’t dare go so far as to actually try and remove the arrow from Dick’s shoulder in case the action ends up doing more harm than good (especially with no proper supplies with which to bind the injury afterwards), but he can still clean it and try to stop the wound from being made any worse than it already is.

Taking hold of the thin shaft between his hands, Jason snaps the wood so that only three or four inches are left protruding out of Dick’s shoulder. The rest he then tosses back into the river behind them to be carried away by the current, before undoing Dick’s belt (noting with disgruntlement that Dick’s sword too, has been lost in the fall) so that he can pull open his tunic.

What he finds underneath is… ugly, to say the least. Moisture has kept the fabric of Dick’s shirt from sticking to the wound, and that’s one blessing as Jason first removes his own tunic, then the plain cotton undershirt he wears beneath it. After replacing the tunic back around his shoulders, he first uses the material of his shirt to wipe the skin around the injury clean, then tears what’s left into strips. His bandaging is clumsy, and he curses the fact that the material is wet; that they both are.

In better circumstances, Jason would take the time to build a fire. He would allow them both to dry off and get warm, as well as rest his aching limbs before moving on. But he’s acutely aware of the danger they’ve left behind them, and how — even if there was dry wood around here with which he could make a flame — such a signal so close to the mountain could easily bring that danger down upon them once again. It’s a risk he simply can’t afford to take, and so, shivering still, Jason fastens Dick’s tunic — covered in mud and congealed blood — back around him before getting to his feet and heaving his brother’s limp body up over his shoulders.

He’ll follow the river. With any luck, it’s either a tributary of the same one that runs through Gotham, or better yet, the Gotham river itself. Rivers invariably lead to people, and the sooner he gets Dick to those who can help him — or pass word on to Bruce to send that help to them — the better.

Focusing his attention on the path ahead, Jason begins walking, step by staggering step, downstream.

He doesn’t see the mist starting to creep down off the mountain in his wake.

 

*

 

The going is slow, and unsteady. In the dark of night, even with the moon’s light above him, Jason struggles to find his footing on the uneven ground. He doesn’t want to risk falling and dropping Dick, so he has to take his time, testing each footfall like a stalking cat on its way to the mouse, and by the time an hour’s passed, Jason doubts he’s made it even half a mile. Still, there’s no choice but to keep walking.

“You’re heavier than you look, you know that?” He says to Dick, talking for the sake of talking. Trying to lift his own spirits, if anything. “When we get home, I’m telling Alfred to put you on a diet. Less of those honeycakes you’re so fond of and more vegetables, that’s my motto. Your teeth will probably thank me for it as well.”

The words have no satisfaction to them though. Not when Dick isn’t awake to be struck by their barbs, or to bite back in turn, and soon Jason falls to silence again, his every effort focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

Sometimes he stumbles, sometime he falls; always trying to make sure his own body takes the brunt of the impact rather than Dick. But gradually they leave the foot of the mountain behind them. The landscape changes from marsh to more stable footing, and scrubby bushes and stubbly trees spring up from the earth in place of reeds and river grass with growing frequency. Jason starts to feels a little more confident that they’re going the right way, even though he won’t be completely certain of that until they hit farmland or one of the great roads that connect Gotham to the other cities of the world.

The journey continues to take its toll on him, however, despite the firmer footing, and it’s with dawn’s first light peaking over the horizon that Jason’s knees finally hit dirt without the strength to rise again. This time he barely has the presence of mind to roll Dick’s still unconscious form off his shoulders before collapsing down beside him. His chest heaves with exertion, and though the walk has dried his clothes, it’s still cold. Cold enough that Jason feels like icicles have formed in his chest, scraping against his lungs and the soft tissue of his throat.

How far has his march taken them? Six miles? Seven? Whatever it is, it doesn’t feel like enough. They still haven’t found sight nor sound of another human being, and until they do, Dick’s life is still in danger. Both their lives as a matter of fact, if the heaving cough that chooses that moment to break out of Jason’s lungs is anything to go by.

Once the fit has passed, Jason turns his head to look at Dick beside him. He’s still pale, though his lips have colour in them again. However, the glow of his wings remains faint beneath his back, making Jason’s heart thud harder in his chest. He’s not stupid, he knows that glow is the real clue to how well Dick is doing, and so long as it remains faint his chances of survival remain slim.

With the last of his strength, Jason forces himself to roll over to face Dick, wrapping his arms and legs around the older man’s unconscious body, crowding closer to him than he’s ever dared to before outside of those times they wrestled on the training field together as boys. Body heat is all he has to offer Dick, in lieu of medicine or the warming flames of a fire — still too dangerous to attempt even here and now, Jason’s instincts warn, in tones that sound remarkably similar to Bruce.

“G-gonna be okay, Dick,” he whispers to him, muffling another cough into his own shoulder. “Gonna be okay, just… ten minutes.”

Ten minutes of rest, that’s all. He promises himself this as he closes his eyes, nose buried in the softness of Dick’s hair. He smells like river water and sickness, they both do, but it can’t be helped.

Ten minutes, then he’ll get up and move again.

 

*

 

The next time when Jason opens his eyes, the world is white around him. Daylight, weak as it is, shines down through the mist. The mist that...

Jason rockets up into a sitting position, disentangling his limbs from Dick’s own to look in horrified disbelief at his surroundings. “What—” he coughs, “What the…”

He feels terrible, worse even than before. However long it was he slept, it was much more than ten minutes. Long enough for the thrice-cursed mist that had caused all their troubles in the first place to catch up with them once again.

“Shit.” he whispers, “Shit, shit _shit_ —”

“Jason...”

The sound of his own name snaps Jason out of his burgeoning panic, guiding his eyes downwards. Dick looks ghastly where he’s laid beside him. His blue eyes red-rimmed and darkly hollowed. His hair a tangled mess. He looks like a ghost of himself, yet he’s alive. Alive and awake. Jason’s never seen a more beautiful sight.

“Dick?”

“Hey.” Dick smiles, or tries to. It falters the moment it begins, like even the small act of curving his lips takes more strength than he’s capable of. “We’re… alive.”

 _For now_ , is the first damning reply that wants to come from Jason’s lips, but he bites it back. Better not to worry Dick anymore than he has to.

But the moment Jason opens his mouth to say something more reassuring, he’s overtaken by a cough yet again. This time he turns his head away from Dick until it’s gone, before spitting mucus onto the grass. “Kind of.” His hand touches Dick’s face without his permission, fingers grazing over his cheek to his forehead and feeling with some alarm how warm his skin is. “How you feeling?”

“Probably as bad as you look, judging by your face.” Dick tries to sit up, then winces sharply at the pain in his shoulder. Jason quickly pushes him to lie back down.

“Yeah, funny guy. Don’t move. You got hit by an arrow, remember?”

Dick bites his lip, nodding and feeling with his opposite hand across his chest until he finds the stub of the arrow shaft in his shoulder. “You didn’t… didn’t take it out?”

Jason shakes his head. “Didn’t know if it was safe to. I’ve got no supplies and,” he winces, suppressing another cough where it’s gathered in his throat, “didn’t want to make it worse. It could be stuck on bone, and if I can’t patch the bleeding after...”

“Smart.”

“One of us has to be.”

Jason looks down then. “Dick, I… I’m sorry about…”

“Don’t.” Dick says sharply, his tone all ‘big brother command’ for a moment before he closes his eyes, shivering from another wave of pain. If it’s not the mist making his hair stick to his forehead, it’s sweat. “Where are we?”

“I’m not sure.” Jason replies, responding automatically. Dick sounds like Bruce when he talks like that, and it’s ingrained in Jason to fall into line. “We fell from the cliff into a river. Lucky as hell that we were washed up on the bank instead of drowning. I’ve been following it downstream.”

“And the… bandits?”

“No sign of them.” Jason covers his mouth as he coughs. The more he talks, the worse his own voice sounds. “Not yet.”

He starts as Dick suddenly tries to sit up again, pushing himself away from the ground. “Hey! Whoa, whoa… Dick, you need to—”

“We have to keep moving.” Dick says through gritted teeth, leaning away from Jason’s attempt to support him. “Find help.”

“I know. That’s what I have been doing. But now this damn mist has followed us—”

“Followed us?”

Jason nods. “It wasn’t here when I went to sleep. Wasn’t where I woke up next to the river earlier, either. There’s something wrong with it, Dick..”

“Jason, it’s mist. It can’t—”

“It came out of nowhere before, remember? Right before the rest of our men were taken. Before our horses bolted. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I think it…” A flash of memory hits him, “That guy… on the cliff with the staff…”

Dick stares at him, hand clutching his shoulder. The glow of his wings burns stronger than it did before, like a beacon in the mist. “What guy?”

“There was someone there before we fell.” _Before I let go._ “Someone in a cloak. I couldn’t see their face.”

Jason watches Dick consider his words for a moment. His expression hardens. “Help me up, we need to move. We need to…” he flinches as Jason takes his good arm, “Need to tell Bruce.”

Jason steadies him. Despite Dick’s determination, he doesn’t look at all well. Even standing has made his face shine with a fresh layer of sweat, and he’s still far paler than he should be. “Are you sure you can walk?”

“I’m fine, Jason.” His concern is brushed aside. “Let’s just go.”

Jason doesn’t believe him, but looking at the mist surrounding them, he knows they can’t stay here.

 

*

 

They make it a couple more miles before Dick topples over, saved from a painful landing only by the speed of Jason’s reflexes.

“I’m fine,” he insists as Jason hauls him back up straight, arm tight around Dick’s waist. “I just… need a moment to catch my breath.”

“Catch your breath.” Jason says, unimpressed as Dick tries to push away from him and stand under his own power again. He keeps hold of him, suppressing a cough only through sheer strength of will. “Full offence, Dick, I’ve seen newborn calves with better coordination than you have right now.”

“Are you calling me a cow?”

“No, I’m calling you a man with a hole in his shoulder, who’s lost far too much blood.”

Dick shrugs it off, or tries to. His face goes ghost white with pain, and for a moment he can’t help by lean into Jason as his wings shake. It’s the easiest time Jason’s ever had of proving a point to him in four years of knowing Dick. He didn’t even have to do anything.

“See?”

“Shut up.” Dick grumbles, face to Jason’s shoulder in a way that would make his heart skip a beat under any other circumstances. “You’re sick.”

It takes Jason a moment to realise Dick isn’t making an insult against his disposition, but rather an observation of his health. He shakes his head, “It’s nothing, just a cold.”

As if to prove him wrong, another lung-splitting cough attempts to work its way free of his chest. Jason just barely manages to suppress it this time, making a poor pantomime of clearing his throat instead.

“Cold, my ass.” Dick mutters. “If Alfred saw you now—”

“If Alfred saw us both, he’d have our guts for garters.” Jason cuts him off. This time he does cough. The sound shakes his lungs and makes him feel dizzy for a moment, as mucus peels from the inside of his throat like paint from a wall. “Fuck, we’re both in a bad way, Dick. Let’s not make it a competition.”

“You only say that because if it were, I’d win.”

“I said let’s not.” Jason says again, pointedly. Gods, he’s so tired. Already so tired, and they’ve barely made it anywhere. The mist makes his skin crawl as it curls around them, and only the solid weight of Dick’s body is a comfort. “Just… lean on me. We’ll make faster progress that way.”

For a moment, he thinks Dick is about to refuse again. Stubborn, the pair of them. Bruce had alway said so, and knocked their heads together more than once for it. Dick was used to leading, used to being the one giving orders and standing strong in the face of adversity. It isn’t in his nature to show weakness in front of his younger siblings.

It isn’t in Jason’s nature to show weakness at all.

After an indeterminate amount of time, during which Jason barely breathes at all, Dick finally nods his agreement, however reluctantly. “All right. But tell me if it gets too much.”

“Funny,” Jason says, “I was just about to say the same thing to you.”

 

*

 

Jason sees the mill house first. A looming, ominous shape in the darkening mist.

They’ve walked all through the hours of the day, stopping to rest only briefly. A relentless march, especially for men in such poor condition as they. Jason’s bruises feel like they have bruises, his feet ache, and every breath is a struggle, as if attempting to draw rope through the eye of a needle. It must be worse for Dick, he knows, but neither of them raises a single word of complaint. They never do when there really is something worth complaining about.

“Dick, look.” He rasps, nodding forwards.

The effort it takes Dick to lift his head is like raising mountains. He’s been staring dead-eyed at his feet for the past hour, watching every step as if witnessing their movement was the only thing keeping him in motion. “Is that…?”

“Shelter, at the least.” Jason grits his teeth, drawing Dick’s arm — and subsequently all his weight — more firmly against his aching shoulders. “Come on.”

It becomes clear once they get closer that the mill is abandoned, and has been for quite some time. The water wheel is stationary and rotten. A garden that once would have flourished with vegetables and herbs now nothing more than a tangled overgrown mess — though Jason, conscious of how long it’s been since either of them have eaten, holds out hope that something edible might yet be found in its beds. The wooden shutters of the windows hang loosely off rusted hinges, but the door at least still looks solid in its foundation, and the roof intact. It’ll be dry, and more importantly, if he can get a fire started, _warm_.

In that at least, the mist outside is good for one thing: Jason no longer has to worry about smoke being the thing that gives their position away.

The inside of the house isn’t much better than the exterior. Dust stirs up under their feet after he pushes the (unlatched) door open, threatening to make Jason’s already strained lungs rebel entirely. He barely manages to get Dick sat down on the musty mattress of the bed before the fit overtakes him, making tears spring into the corners of his eyes and his wheezing worsen until he sounds like nothing more than a braying donkey.

He’s helpless therefore, when Dick’s fingers wrap around his wrist to tug him down onto the cot beside him. When his hand curls around the back of Jason’s neck and draws his head to his shoulder, before moving round to rub warm circles into his back. Jason heaves and shakes beneath the gentle touch, embarrassed by his own vulnerability, yet helpless to stop it.

“See, you are sick.” Dick says, not unkindly once he’s finished. His own exhaustion shows through in his voice, as well as the grey undertone of his skin.

Jason pushes away from him, hurriedly wiping at his eyes with his muddied sleeve. The now dry earth cracks and breaks from the fabric to fall to the floor beneath his scrubbing. “I’ll be all right.”

“Jason—”

“Stay there. Rest. I’ll get a fire going, and see if there’s any food.”

Jason finds his own concern openly mirrored back at him in the deep blue of Dick’s eyes as he stands up, but he doesn’t let it hold him back from completing the task he’s set for himself. However bad the malaise in his lungs, he’s still in a better condition than Dick, and that makes it his responsibility to see to his well being for once.

There’s a reserve of wood by the fireplace, old, but dry enough to burn, as well as flint and tinder beside it. Perhaps the former owner of this house had meant to come back some day, or perhaps they’d simply been conscious that travellers in need of warmth and shelter would someday walk through these woods. Whatever the reason for its presence, Jason is grateful that it’s here.

It takes a few tries for his trembling hands to strike a spark once the wood has been arranged on the hearth, but soon enough a flame burns merrily. The sudden warmth makes his extremities prickle, particularly his nose and the tips of his fingers, and Jason bathes in the pleasant unpleasantness of the feeling for a moment before forcing himself to rise yet again. It’s the first time he’s felt truly warm since they left home.

Leaving the fire’s heat to continue spreading throughout the house behind him, Jason steps back out through the door and into the garden. The overgrowth seems worse from the comfort of the doorstep, the mist more ominous, and the prospect of going out into the cold as distasteful as the idea of bashing his head against a rock. But they need food, and unless they want to eat the spiders out of their cobwebs from the corners of the house, this is the only place Jason can see to get it.

A half hour’s foraging among the weeds nets him an armful of wild potatoes, carrots and onions, all small and wizened thanks to long neglect. They’re better than nothing though, and Jason returns inside only with the regret that he doesn’t have the means with which to catch some of the rabbits who have left their spoors out among the plants as well. Fresh meat would definitely go down well, right now.

He glances towards the bed after shutting and latching the door behind him to find Dick dozing, fast asleep with the moth-eaten blankets draped over his chest. It’s a surprise, and a relief, to see that he’s doing just as Jason asked and resting. He’ll need all that he can get if they’re to make any significant headway on their journey tomorrow.

Too hungry to wait, Jason eats one of the smallest carrots raw while doing the best he can to roast the other vegetables over the fire. Normally he’s a decent cook, but with limited ingredients and only one pan to be found, it’s the best he can do just to make sure the food is heated through. Dick rouses, perhaps thanks to the smell, as Jason brings it over to him.

“That smells…” Dick searches for the word, “edible.”

“Fuck you.” Jason says without bite, turning his head away to sneeze before handing a potato — cooled enough that it won’t burn his fingers — to him. “Eat up.”

“Thanks.”

They devour their meal mostly in silence, Jason trying to push the lion’s share of the food Dick’s way without him noticing, while Dick surreptitiously tries to do the same to him. Their silent argument ends with each more or less eating his fair portion, and as much as Jason would like to resent Dick for that, his full stomach speaks otherwise.

“You should let me look at your wound, again.” He says, after pushing the now empty pan away. “I can dress it fresh with the blankets from the bed.”

“We’re going to need those blankets to stay warm while we sleep.”

Jason frowns, eyeing the still subdued glow of Dick’s wings as he speaks; the way they hang down his back instead of holding themselves aloft. “Tomorrow then, before we move on.”

“Tomorrow.” Dick agrees.

Jason watches him from where he’s sitting on the floor next to the bed. It’s a little easier to breath now, as the warm air soothes his lungs. But his chest still feels tight looking at Dick. No meal or crackling fire can take away Jason’s guilt at letting them get into this situation in the first place, as much as he rationally knows he couldn’t have predicted the arrow that took Dick through the shoulder while he was busy grousing about the fact they’d lost their way. Even if he’d been good and obedient, a dutiful younger brother following the lead of his elder, Dick still might have gotten shot, and they still might have come to be in this situation.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Dick says to him, while he’s thinking about that, and Jason realises with a start that his watching has turned to staring. He feels himself blush at being caught.

“It’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” The corners of Dick’s perfectly shaped mouth curve upwards, hinting at a smile. “Your head really is empty then? All these years, I knew I was onto something.”

Jason flushes harder. “No. I…” he hits Dick — more lightly than he’s ever hit him before in his life — in the thigh. “I’m just—” _I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re alive._ “—thinking about how far we have to travel yet.”

Dick’s hand covers his, and Jason feels his heart skip a beat as a result. “We found this place. If there’s a mill, there must be a village not too far away.”

“An abandoned mill.” Jason corrects him.

“There’ll be something.”

“How can you be sure?”

Dick looks at him steadily, and Jason know the answer without having to be told. He wants to refute Dick’s hope, his optimism, but after the mountain…

“Right.” he mutters instead. “All right. I guess we’ll find out.”

Dick’s fingers squeeze tighter around his. Jason wants to rip his hand away. He wants to never let go.

What he does instead, is say, “You should get some more rest. I’ll take watch.”

“You need rest too.” Dick doesn’t let go of him.

Jason shakes his head. “I’ll be fine.”

“You’re sick, Jason.” Dick replies stubbornly. He tugs on Jason’s hand, encouraging him upwards onto the bed beside him. “And you won’t get well sitting out in the cold. The doors and windows are locked, no one will get in here without us knowing about it.”

“And by the time we wake, they’ll have already broken down the door and slit our throats.”

“Then I’ll stay awake while you sleep.” Dick pulls on his arm again. “I’m not asking, Jason. I’m telling you.”

The command is back in his voice. Jason bites his lip, but finally acquiesces to join Dick on the bed. He is tired. So very tired. His head aches, his lungs contract; nothing sounds more appealing than sleep right now. Especially sleep beside Dick. “You better.” he says, “Stay awake I mean.”

“I promise.”

The bed is narrow, and lying down side by side on it means that their bodies can’t help but press together, shoulder to hip and everything inbetween. The fire is still burning strong, and the blankets, thin and worn as they are, have already been warmed by Dick’s body heat when he drapes them over Jason. It’s a recipe for disaster, for sleep, no matter how determined Jason might be to fight against it. He allows his eyelids to sink down once, and after that he stands no chance of staying awake at all.

“Dick…”

A dry hand presses against his forehead. “Sleep.” the firm command.

The last thing Jason hears before falling into a deep black slumber is the hoot of an owl, somewhere outside the house.

 

*

 

Dick’s hand covers his mouth.

“ _Quiet_.” he hisses at Jason, who instinctively grabbed for his wrist the moment he came awake. “Listen.”

The fire in the hearth has burned down to embers while Jason slept, and from what he can see, it’s still dark outside the windows. He strains his ears to listen; to hear what Dick has already picked up on.

Dust drifts down from the rafters of the roof. Jason’s willing to bet all his inheritance that it’s no fox creeping about up there.

He slips from the bed first. Luckily, since they lack possessions, there’s no supplies to gather; no packs to hitch over their shoulders. No weapons either, and Jason grimaces at that, at least until his eyes land on the poker sitting next to the fireplace.

Well, it’s better than nothing.

He creeps over towards it while Dick sits up from the bed, shaking a moment and gritting his teeth before climbing to his feet. By the time Jason comes back with the poker, he’s mostly stable under his own power, and giving the iron a sour look the nearer it comes to him.

“Don’t worry,” Jason whispers, old memories of chasing Dick around Bruce’s hall with a poker just like his one in hand when he was fourteen choosing an inopportune moment to rise, “I’m not planning to use it on you.”

Dick, for whom iron provokes a moderate allergic reaction — nothing compared to full on agony his full-blooded fae ancestors would have suffered from its touch — smiles weakly, doubtless thinking of the same thing. He nods, turning to look at the back door, and that’s when Jason notices something on the bed, and Dick’s back.

Feathers, shaken loose, have been left on the mattress behind him. Others still, hang as if they are about to fall from his wings. Jason, who has never once in his life seen Dick lose a feather before, almost drops the poker at the sight.

Does he know? Jason wonders. He has to know. Dick would never miss such a detail, especially from something which is so intrinsically a part of him. His free hand aches to reach out and touch, to feel the feathers for himself as if to verify their authenticity, but there’s no time. Not when they seem in imminent danger of attack.

Creeping forwards, they barely make it to the back door before the front is suddenly breaking inwards. Jason hurls himself forwards in front of Dick as they rush to escape the building, because sick or not, at least he has full use of both hands. Just in time too, as the moment he opens the back door something swipes at him from the mist outside, and Jason looks wide-eyed into the face of a horror.

Yellow eyes — bright, piercing — like those of a hunting bird stare at him from a face so starkly white, he might be forgiven for thinking blood had never have flowed through it in the first place, were it not for the protruding presence of blue veins running like an ugly web across its features. The creature — man, dressed all in black, comes at him with twin knives gripped in his hands, and it’s all Jason can do to raise the poker in time to meet the attack.

Steel bites deep into iron, and Jason chokes at the surprising strength in his opponent’s arms. He pushes back, disengages, then strikes again, feeling clumsy in the face of the creature’s astounding speed. It backs him up into the house, scoring a strike across his chest with one blade, then the bridge of nose with another. Jason hisses at the twin flares of pain, while a hit of his own from the poker barely seems to stagger his opponent.

He hits it again, full-on, sees its neck bend, then right itself. Another bolt of horror runs through him. He thinks of the front door breaking inwards, of what could be coming up on them from behind: a creature just like this one. Then—

A screech, unholy as the devil’s, breaks the air. Jason feels a rush of heat. And when he dares a look back he sees that Dick has gone for the fire, and madly, using the cooking pan, scooped the embers out and thrown them at the near-identical creature attacking them from the other side.

Coals have scattered everywhere as it clutches at its face and burning clothes, and the house, old and so so dry, is more than liable to catch fire.

Inwardly, Jason both curses and praises Dick’s ingenuity, before his attention is caught once again by the creature attacking _him._

It stabs a knife forward at his stomach, then takes a blow from the poker — which is starting to look decidedly bent — and shrugs it off like a duck shaking water from its back. Jason grits his teeth as he steps backwards. Well if hitting it isn’t working…

He waits for his moment, a brief detour of the creature’s eye towards Dick behind him, then charges forward, throwing all his considerable weight into the run as they collide together.

A fire poker is not strictly meant as a piercing weapon. In fact, it’s not meant as a weapon at all, but put enough force behind any solid object, and eventually it will run through flesh.

Jason has a lot of force to give.

One of the blades the creature wields slashes the side of his face, cutting up high and narrowly avoiding his eye, but Jason succeeds in skewering it on the poker. Then, into the wall. It shrieks, in a voice that is painfully human, before he pushes himself back and away from its attempt to stab him again.

Now he’s weaponless, and Dick—

Dick staggers into him, his good hand clamping down on Jason’s shoulder. When Jason looks behind his sweat-drenched face and upraised wings, it’s to a building wall of orange flame and the writhing struggles of something human-shaped trapped on the other side.

“ _Run!_ ” Dick hisses in his ear.

Jason doesn’t need telling twice.

They burst out of the now clear back door into the waiting arms of the mist. Jason, who in the panic of the attack had almost forgotten it was there, at first balks at the idea of running through that oppressive cloud, and at the idea of what might be lurking within, but then Dick shoves him forwards again and he has no choice but to obey. Their shelter, the all too brief reprieve against a quest gone terribly wrong, is now burning to a cinder behind them. Running therefore, is their only option.

The shadows of trees loom up before them, and without thought or hesitation, they dive forwards into the suffocating gloom.


	3. Chapter 3

“Those… those were not bandits.” Jason gasps, when he finally dares to stop. He can barely breathe, mucus clogging up his nose, lungs and throat. He bends over, trying to suppress the coming cough into his sleeve so that the sound won’t give them away — though he’d hope the light of the burning mill house would be a bigger distraction if any more of those things are following them. “What the fuck. Were… were they even people? Their eyes, they looked like...”

Fresh blood soaks into his shirt from the throbbing cuts across his eye and nose, and Jason is glad his tunic was brown to start with, otherwise it would look a whole worse now than it already does. He’s definitely still going to have to burn it when they get back to Gotham, though.

No reply comes, and Jason blinks more blood from his eye before unsteadily turning back to face Dick.

Dick, who is slumped down on the ground, bent almost double with his back to the moss-covered trunk of one of the trees. His hair, stiff and limp from the amount of sweat that’s dried in it — not to mention the mud and river water, hangs down around his face, hiding his expression from view. But Jason still has a clear view of his shaking shoulders, and despite his best efforts, he can hear the sound of the pained gasps Dick is doing his level best to keep quiet.

Instant panic sends him stumbling over to sink down onto to his knees in front of his brother. “Hey! Hey, are you hurt? Did that thing get you?” he demands, reaching for him, and inwardly winces when Dick flinches back. The glow from his wings is worryingly faint again, worse than a dying candle, and it only now occurs to Jason to wonder if his glamour is still in place, or if the spell had broken hours before when Dick was laid unconscious. His Sight means he simply can’t tell. “Hey...”

Dick looks up at him. His eyes, normally so bright and full of life, are glazed over with pain; the whiteness of his skin still jarring for Jason to see. He looks half-dead, washed out, and Jason’s concern rises to such levels over how Dick could have gone from seemingly doing better in the cabin to this state in less than ten minutes that he wants to vomit.

“Dick,” he tries again. “Come on, say something.”

“Shoulder.”

“What?”

Dick stares blankly at him, and eventually Jason’s brain catches up. He reaches out, slowly, trying not to let his fingers tremble like dead autumn leaves as he touches the area immediately around the stub of the arrow. His breathing hitches when they come away slick with fresh blood.

The fight hadn’t given Dick any new wounds, just knocked the one he already has back open.

Jason swallows thickly then, as if he can hold the urge to panic contained in his stomach if he only tries hard enough. “How bad?”

“Not… too bad… just hurts.” Dick shudders. “Really hurts.”

“Are you lying to me?”

Dick’s eyes widen for a moment. He clenches his jaw. “No.”

Jason feels the blood on his fingers grow tacky in the cold air. “You sure?”

“I’ll be okay, Jason.”

It’s all the admittance Jason needs. He hangs his head, closes his eyes for a moment. “I can’t unwrap it. I can’t…” He’s empty handed. Their remaining clothes far too dirtied to be any use as a bandage. “If the bleeding doesn’t stop…”

“It’ll stop. I’ll be all right.”

Dick’s trying to be the older brother again, despite the gravity of the situation. Trying his best, in his own way, to protect Jason from the truth.

“I saw the feathers on the bed.”

“So I’m moulting.”

“You’re not a chicken. You don’t moult.” Jason says stiffly, “I’ve never seen you lose a single feather before. Ever.”

Dick summons a smile, “Yesterday you tried to call me a cow.”

“How bad is it?” Jason asks, bypassing the attempt to divert his attentions into petty argument. He demands the answer this time, needing to hear the words said plain.

Dick sighs, closing his eyes. “Bad. I think… I think there might have been something on the arrow.”

Jason feels like he’s fallen into a chasm. The sudden upset of his heart and stomach into his mouth can have no other explanation.

“I should have taken it out.” he says dully, fingers finding the stub of the shaft and circling it.

Dick’s hand covers his again. “No, Jason. You made… you made the right choice. Alfred always said, you can do more damage taking them out wrong than—”

“But if it’s poisoned...”

His hand is weakly squeezed. “If it is, the poison entered my blood the moment the arrow hit me, and it’s slow acting. The fact I’m still alive now proves that. There’s still time to get help. We just have to keep moving.”

Jason stares at him in disbelief. “How can you be so calm about this?”

Dick opens his mouth, then shuts it. He swallows thickly before confessing, “I’m.. not. Not really, I just… if I let myself think any other way…”

Jason doesn’t need to hear him say more. He gets it. As much as he wishes he didn’t, he does. Sometimes the only reason to get up out of bed in the morning was the single-minded belief that everything would be okay. Speaking for himself, though, he’s never been the optimist out of the pair of them. Not even close.

But for Dick he knows he has to try.

“Right. All right.” Jason runs his hand back through his hair, feeling it shake as he pushes down on all his fear and worry. Squashing it up inside his chest until he can almost breathe normally again. “You’re right. We just… we have to keep moving.”

He pulls his hand away from Dick’s as he lurches back up to his feet. “C’mon, you can lean on me. Maybe we’ll find that village you were talking about up ahead.”

Getting Dick standing again isn’t easy. He almost faints as Jason helps him up, though is swift with his denial over that fact the moment Jason asks. Once he has Dick’s good arm around his shoulders, however, and his own about Dick’s waist, they’re at least able to start walking.

“Those things…” Jason brings up again as they make their way through the shadowed trees, the amber light of the burning mill house still lighting up the darkness behind them. “Have you ever seen anything like them before?”

“No.” Dick admits. “No, I haven’t.”

“Do you think there will be more of them?”

Dick is silent for a moment.

“Keep walking, Jason.”

* * *

They make it another mile before Dick’s legs give out from under him, and Jason is forced to lift his brother up onto his back.

“Lucky you had that growth spurt recently, huh, Jay?” Dick whispers faintly against his ear, his breath the only warm thing about him. “You never would’ve managed this six months ago.”

“Shut up, Dick.” Jason replies, without feeling. He’s far too busy trying not to trip over the tangle of roots beneath his feet to get into a real argument.

“Always used to be so tiny.” Dick’s fingers wind tighter into his tunic. “It’s weird now, always having to look up at you.”

“I said shut up.” He doesn’t like the way the edges of Dick’s words are starting to slur. Not one bit. It reminds him of when Dick and Roy — the adopted son of Oliver Queen — had gotten too deep into their cups on Dick’s eighteenth birthday. Except this time a hangover at the end of the night is the least of his worries. “Just… just try and rest, all right? You need to conserve your energy.”

That stops him, at least for a few minutes. Then...

“Hey, Jay?”

“What?”

“What… what were you saying to me there, back on the mountain?”

Jason blinks. “On the... I… which part?”

He’d said a lot of things on the mountain. Back before and after they were being chased. Try as he might, he can’t immediately identify what it is Dick’s getting at.

“When I told you to drop me. You started to say something. That you couldn’t because I was… then you stopped.”

Jason swallows hard. He’d almost forgotten about that, and truth be told, he’d hoped Dick had too. “It was nothing. I was just…” he fishes quickly for an explanation he’ll believe. “I was going to say that you’re my brother. That’s why I couldn’t drop you.”

“Oh.” And he really must be sick, because for a moment Jason swears he can hear what sounds like a note of disappointment in Dick’s voice. “Got it.”

Twigs crunch alongside the squelch of leaf mulch beneath Jason’s boots. It sounds unnaturally loud, seeming to echo throughout the mist shrouded tree trunks. He bites his lip as he tries to put the moment behind him, as well as not give in to the temptation to see the lurking shapes of golden-eyed wraiths in every shadow.

There’s no time to think about that. Not when their lives, and most importantly Dick’s life, are at stake.

“Jay?” Dick whispers again, and Jason barely restrains a sigh, dreading the arrival of another question he won’t want to answer.

“Yes, Dick?”

“My hands hurt.”

Abruptly, Jason finds himself smiling despite the gravity of the situation. He doesn’t dare let himself laugh for fear of another coughing fit or being overheard by their pursuers, but he can’t help feeling amused still. “Well, yeah. That’s what happens when faeries like you grab iron pans without protection.”

“M’not a faerie. Grandmother was a faery, I’m just a…”

“Chicken boy?”

“Brat.” Dick says into his ear, with the kind of fondness Jason never knows how to handle.

Consequently, he ignores it, choosing to focus on the bigger picture instead. Namely, getting Dick back to Gotham alive.

“You say that like you’re surprised. Now seriously, shut up and rest, Dick. I think I see a path ahead.”

* * *

 The ‘path’ turns out to be little more than a faint dirt track. The kind of trail both animals and hunters use to get through the woods. But it’s bare, clear of roots and bushes, and for a time the way is easier on Jason as he walks, fighting the throbbing of the cuts on his face and the aching in his chest to bear Dick on his back.

He’s gone truly quiet now, the only sound Jason can hear that of nocturnal wildlife and Dick’s faint breathing. He wishes he hadn’t told him to shut up after all. At least Dick’s incessant talking would reassure him that he’s not getting worse, rather than better.

Finally, they crest a small rise through the trees, and unbelievably Jason sees the very village Dick said would be there below them, quiet and gloomy in the middle of the night.

For a moment, all he can do is stand and observe, privately starting to wonder if Dick doesn’t have some real power after all: the ability to make things come true simply by believing in them.

The closer they get to the village, however, the more Jason has the prickling realisation that that may not necessarily be a good thing.

It’s not the fact that the buildings are dark that concerns him. That’s typical for most settlements at this time of night. No, what puts Jason on alert is that, no matter where he looks, he can’t see a single sign of an animal anywhere. No sheep or pigs in their pens, no dogs tied up outside. It’s wrong. All of it.

For that reason, he stops short of actually walking out of the trees with Dick in his arms, turning round and setting him down against one of the nearby tree trunks instead.

“Hey.” he whispers, touching Dick’s cheek with his fingers and swallowing at how cold his skin feels. “Hey, Dick.”

“Mm?”

He opens his eyes blearily. Jason bites his lip hard when he sees how unfocused they are. “I found the village, but something’s wrong. I’m going to go take a look around. See what I can find alone. You need to stay here and hide, okay?”

That gets his attention. “Jason, no. I’ll come with—”

Jason pushes Dick back down before he can even begin to try to stand up. “No.” he says firmly. “If everything’s okay, I’ll come back and get you. If not, I’ll be able to avoid any trouble and get out of there much faster on my own than with you.”

Dick grimaces, but doesn’t argue further. “What are you hoping to find?”

Jason looks back at the village. He can’t see it through the mist, but he knows by the direction they’ve travelled that the river is not far beyond. “People. A doctor or a boat if we’re lucky.”

He moves to stand and walk away, but before he can, Dick catches his arm by his sleeve.

“Jason?”

“What?”

Dick bites his lip. “Be careful.”

Jason nods down at him. Then, selfishly, he twists his hand, taking hold of Dick’s wrist and squeezing it. “I will, I promise.”

“Good…”

After he lets go, Dick leans back against the tree, closing his eyes as he curls in on himself to rest. Jason watches him for a few moments longer before shaking his head.

He needs to go. Only then will he have a chance of actually saving Dick.

* * *

 The village is even more eerie once Jason slips through its outskirts, passing between empty sheds and abandoned pens. He can smell straw and animal shit, but there’s no sign of the creatures themselves. But at least he finds a weapon in the form of a pitchfork left leaning against an empty hen house. That makes him feel better, even though such a tool would hardly be his first choice. Beggars can’t be choosers, though.

The further in he goes, the worse the smell gets. No longer that of shit and straw, but blood, rotting flesh.

_Death._

It belatedly occurs to Jason that the danger in coming here may not be those creatures following them, but rather that they may have already been here.

Breathing hard with every step, he approaches the nearest house and, without knocking, opens the door.

A second later, Jason stumbles back, revulsion leaking out of every pore in his body as he turns and vomits onto the grass verge.

So much for finding help.

Instinct tells him to turn tail and run back out of the village. Grab Dick and make way as best he can on foot, but Jason’s not stupid. He knows that would be a death sentence for his brother — maybe even himself, what with the way his chest feels. If there’s no doctor here, then their best chance to get Dick to one before they run out of time is in finding transportation. A horse or a boat, and for Jason that means moving forwards.

At least it doesn’t look like any of the creatures are still around. If they were, they surely would have attacked him by now.

Unless...

Casting a glance back behind him through the mist to where he left Dick, Jason steels himself to keep moving forward to where he thinks the river lies.

Every step is a battle. Jason is no longer small and built for sneaking — not as much as he once was at any rate. He tries to be as quiet as possible, pulling his tunic up over his nose so that the smell of dried mud will overpower the rot. It’s still not pleasant, but one option makes him want to retch decidedly less than the other (resisting the urge to cough and sneeze, though, is another matter entirely).

After five minutes of walking, finally Jason sees it. He’s tempted to break into a run, but instead forces himself to take his time in approaching the water, before looking up and down the bank for a boat.

With their luck so far, he wouldn’t be surprised if there were none, but finally that luck seems to be changing, as Jason’s eyes light on a small rowboat tethered to the post of a nearby jetty.

“Gods be praised.” he mutters, in a rare moment of piety, “ _Thank you_.”

Jason takes as much time as he dares checking the boat over, making sure it has no leaks and the oars are where they should be. A sailboat would theoretically be better, but he’d have no idea how to work it. At least oars are self-explanatory, if only because Jason once stole one to escape from the city watch over the Gotham river before Bruce adopted him.

Satisfied that the boat will hold them, he turns to creep back through the village and collect Dick.

He’s almost reached the village square when the feeling of being watched hits him again.

Jason adjusts his grip on the pitchfork and keeps on walking. No matter what, he tells himself, he has to reach Dick. He has to make sure his brother gets out of here alive and onto that boat, even if it costs him his own life in the process.

Though he very much hopes it won’t come to that.

It would be easier, Jason thinks, if his eyes could see through fog as well as they do glamours and other magic, but that’s not the case. He’s going to have to rely on his other senses for this, and pray that they’ll be enough for them both to survive.

He waits until he hears the creak of wood above him before breaking into a run.

A knife flies through the space where he once was. Still more follow in his footsteps as he runs. Jason hears them hit the packed earth of the road with dry thuds, and not for a second does he allow himself to slow down or stop, knowing that to do so would almost certainly mean death.

It isn’t until he’s almost at the edge of the square that a shadow dislodges itself from one of the rooftops and dives down at him head on.

Using the pitchfork like a staff, Jason twists and swings at his opponent, ignoring the temptation to throw the tool at the creature instead. If he missed he’d be left weaponless, and that’s the last thing he needs right now, to go barefisted against a horror. Better to hang onto the pitchfork and take the risk of getting in close and personal with the creature.

It’s just like the others from the mill house. Pale as death, with blue veins running through its face and golden eyes. It dodges his initial sweep and returns the blow with one of its own, swiping at him with a clawed hand.

Jason is forced to duck. Weave. Give ground as he fights the creature and waits for an opening to appear. He tries not to let his impatience undo him. His growing fear for Dick, left alone and virtually helpless in the treeline beyond the village.

With every second the fight draws out, his breathing grows more laboured. His chest tighter. Jason barely avoids earning a third scar on his face when those claws come within an inch of his nose, or losing his life when a second swipe grazes across his throat. It’s fast enough to get under his guard even though he has the longer weapon, and Jason is in no shape to compensate for that fact.

In the end, it’s sheer dumb luck that saves him.

The creature lunges and Jason steps back desperately to avoid it. His foot lands on something slippery and he gasps as it slides out from underneath him, sending him falling towards the ground. Instinctively he thrusts the pitchfork in front of him as his back impacts with the earth, squeezing his eyes shut and cursing as he expects to feel the creature on him a second later. Instead, there’s a jerk to the pitchfork, and it suddenly grows much heavier on the opposite end.

Cautiously, Jason opens his eyes, then winces at what he sees.

The creature hadn’t expected Jason’s fall. Hadn’t expected the unpredictable push of the pitchfork into the space where it had ended up. Now it’s impaled on the end of it, two tines shoved up through its jaw and into its skull.

Jason lets go of the pitchfork. It and the creature instantly fall down to the side, motionless.

Shaking, he allows himself to lie there on the road for approximately five seconds before forcing himself back up onto his feet again. He guesses he can probably add shit to the list of substances he’s covered in now.

It’s tempting to stop and take a closer look at the creature. To try figure out exactly what it is now that he’s apparently killed one. But Jason can already feel how the fight has drained him now that the adrenaline is wearing off, leaving him weak and shaky, like a drinking vessel emptied of all its contents. Killing it took almost everything he had, and he still has to get Dick to the boat.

Leaving the creature’s corpse behind, Jason walks into the square, only to be brought up short by what he sees there.

“Dick!” he cries out, stumbling then towards his brother’s prone body. “Dick, what the hell?”

Dick is laid out on his back in the middle of the square, wings dull, and with no visible clue of how he got there. Jason’s heart starts to pound impossibly fast as he falls to his knees beside him and presses his fingers in against his neck in search of a pulse.

He finds it, faint and fluttering, and only has a moment to sigh in relief before a voice speaks up from behind him.

“Impressive. Sick, possibly dying, yet you managed to take out one of our servants nonetheless.”

Jason whips his head round to search for the source, but sees nothing. Nothing but the mist.

“Who’s there?!” He demands, pulling Dick closer to him and wincing when more feathers are left drifting on the ground. He’s without a weapon again, and curse the fortunes for it. “The hell are you?!”

A dark shape darts through the thickening mist. There and gone again as soon as Jason spots it. He coughs bitterly while he waits for an answer, trying to shield Dick from the worst of it by turning his head into his shoulder.

“It’s lucky that we were already here seeking a replacement, otherwise you might have cost us much, Jason Todd.”

This time the voice comes from the left of him, and again Jason is too slow in turning his head to see the culprit. Male is the only thing he can tell so far. Male, possibly older; far older than him.

“I asked who the hell are you!” He shouts, then heaves a cough. “S-s-stop fucking around and show yourself!”

The mist parts like a wave as the last syllable fades. Approaching from within it is the same tall, robed figure Jason remembers seeing from up on the mountain before they fell. The man’s face is covered by a strange white mask, with black eyes and a small pointed protrusion in the shape of a beak on the front of it.

 _Like an owl_ , he thinks. It looks just like an owl.

It’s also quite possibly the creepiest thing Jason’s ever seen.

Other shapes appear from the mist behind the masked man, stepping into place by his shoulders. Two more of the yellow-eyed creatures, their faces pale and expressions blank, riddled with blue veins. Jason feels queasy just looking at them, and he abruptly remembers what was said to him only seconds before, that these people came after him and Dick seeking a ‘replacement’.

Gods, surely they can’t mean…

“Release him to me, boy,” the masked man says, “And perhaps I will grant you a quick, honourable death, rather than a slow tortured one by that sickness in your chest.”

Jason somehow tightens his arms more around Dick, setting his teeth against the reality he’s just encountered. The cold, cruel idea that the goal all along may have been to take his brother and turn him into one of those… things. “No. No, I won’t let you have him.”

A note of amusement enters the man’s voice. “You understand you cannot stop us. I doubt you could even stand right now if you tried. I make my offer as a gesture of respect for your efforts so far only, nothing more.”

“I’m not going to let you—” a wet cough wracks its way out of his lungs this time, and Jason swears he tastes blood on his tongue by the end of it as he wheezes, “—t-turn him… into… one of…one of...”

“Clever boy.” the man nods, confirming his suspicion. He signals behind him to the two creatures, which start to walk forward again. “They are called Talons, the most worthy servants of our cabal. Difficult to make — they require the original subject to have fae blood running in their veins, but once created, loyal to a fault.”

Fae blood, something Dick has in abundance.

“You drew us out here on purpose,” he whispers hoarsely, “The t-tales of… of bandits… you…”

“Yes.” the man watches, seemingly impassive as the two Talons surround Jason, but then with that mask covering his face it’s impossible to tell any emotion for certain. “Last chance to die easy, boy; release him.”

Jason looks down at Dick’s unconscious face. The dim, dismal, now almost non-existent outline of his delicate little wings.

He’s never done anything easy in his life, why the hell should he start now?

“Go to the lowest hell, monster.” Jason spits back defiantly, squaring his shoulders as much as he’s able and lifting his chin proudly.

There’s a pregnant pause in the air, then the man lifts his hand, flicking his fingers forward almost casually. His next words are spoken only for the Talons. “Take him.”

Black gloved and clawed hands reach down at them. The wicked gleam of bare steel visible on either side. Jason closes his eyes and grits his teeth, resolving to hold on to Dick as long as he can. To force them to have to cut off his fingers to part them if he has to, but then another sound — many of them in fact — ring out between the houses of the village and into the square, causing all of them to stop.

The pounding of hooves. The neighing of horses.

His eyes fly back open, and Jason looks up as the masked man curses at the sight of what can only be a literal cavalry coming to their rescue. Jason is stunned, disbelieving even as he recognises the banner they carry, and the armour of the man riding at the head of the column with a furious snarl on his normally stern face.

 _Bruce,_ he thinks with dazed relief, _somehow Bruce is here_. Everything will be all right now, he knows it.

Another bout of coughing starts to shake his lungs as the two Talons disappear from his side, perhaps running back to their master. Jason tastes more blood in his mouth as he half-cries, half-laughs. He kept Dick safe through all of it, kept him from those who would take him. That’s all that matters. That’s all that can matter. It’s the only thought running through his head as he sways dizzily in place, holding tightly onto Dick until the last. Until familiar hands cup his head and an even more familiar voice speaks.

“It’s all right, Jason. It’s all right, son. I’m here now, you did well. Let him go. I’ve got you both, I promise.”

He means to say something back, but the exhaustion Jason’s been battling up until now finally takes that moment to win over him.

Dropping his face down against the limp softness of Dick’s hair, he gracelessly passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betcha all didn't expect this to update XD Almost at the end now!

**Author's Note:**

> [Firefright's tumblr](https://firefrightfic.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [Pentapus' tumblr](https://pentapoda.tumblr.com/)


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